Knowing What Counts Conferencing and Reporting

Rick Stiggins Pearson Assessment Training Institute, Portland, OR

involve students in their own assessment. The authors provide time-tested ideas and practical step-by-step instructions for students to demonstrate their learning and take an active role in providing proof of learning to others.

This book includes: • Practical ideas • Cross-curricular examples • A variety of ways to involve students in showing proof of learning • Responses to commonly asked questions • Reproducibles

Conferencing and Reporting is the third book of the three-volume set

called Knowing What Counts —a series for teachers who want to help their students learn more by involving them in assessment.

Knowing What Counts

Conferencing and Reporting Second Edition

Kathleen Gregory l Caren Cameron l Anne Davies

Conferencing and Reporting focuses on practical ways for teachers to

Conferencing and Reporting

“In this brief but strategy-packed book, Kathleen, Caren, and Anne show teachers exactly how to take full advantage of involving students in telling the story of their own growth and then reporting to others about their achievement status with evidence to back up their claims. This book is about helping students make productive decisions in order to pursue academic success. When they do, achievement skyrockets. I encourage readers to take full advantage of the tools offered herein.”

solution-tree.com

A Joint Publication

Kathleen Gregory l Caren Cameron l Anne Davies

Foreword by Rick Stiggins

Copyright © 2001, 2011 by Kathleen Gregory, Caren Cameron, Anne Davies First edition 2001 Second edition 2011 All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction of this book in whole or in part in any form.

Published in the US by Solution Tree Press 555 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404 800.733.6786 (toll free) / 812.336.7700 FAX: 812.336.7790 email: info@solution-tree.com solution-tree.com Printed in the United States of America 15 14 13 12 11

1 2 3 4 5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gregory, Kathleen.

Conferencing and reporting / by Kathleen Gregory, Caren Cameron, Anne Davies. -- 2nd ed. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-935543-79-4 (perfect bound) -- ISBN 978-1-935543-80-0 (library edition) 1. Student-led parent conferences. 2. Parent-teacher conferences. 3. Students--Self-rating of. 4. Teacher-student relationships.

I. Cameron, Caren. II. Davies, Anne, 1955- III. Title.

LC225.5.G74 2011 371.102’3--dc22 2011008259

Solution Tree Jeffrey C. Jones, CEO & President

Solution Tree Press President: Douglas M. Rife Publisher: Robert D. Clouse Vice President of Production: Gretchen Knapp Managing Production Editor: Caroline Wise Senior Production Editor: Risë Koben

Connections Publishing Stewart Duncan, CEO & President Project Manager: Judith Hall-Patch Design: Karen Armstrong, Mackenzie Duncan, Kelly Giordano, Cori Jones

Knowing What Counts

Contents

Foreword

7

Introduction

13

Conferencing and repor ting are changing.

Students take a lead role.

Audiences are essential to the process.

Suppor ting student learning

13 14 14 15

1. Initiating Conversations About Learning

17

Work Samples Por tfolio Afternoon Goal Envelopes Subject Stations Picture This Criteria With Evidence Mind Maps Home Per formances School Per formances

18 19 23 25 27 29 31 33 34

Personal Newsletter

35

2. Involving Students in Conferences

37

Student-Parent-Teacher Conference Individual Education Plan (IEP) Conference

38 44

Student-Teacher Conference

47

6

Contents

3. Questions and Responses

53

What do you think of districts that mandate involvement of students in conferencing and repor ting? /53 Aren’t students reluctant to have parents come to school or to talk about what they are doing in school? /53 How can I do student-parent-teacher conferences when I have over 100 students? /54 How do you possibly find time to do all the ideas described in this book? /56 How do you help parents respond to their child’s work in a positive, constructive manner? /57 Is it wor th it to involve students in assessment? /57 How can we get busy parents more involved? /58

Conclusion 59

Appendix: Reproducibles 61 Bibliography 75

Foreword

Over the past 20 years, we have experienced a revolution in our understanding about how to communicate about student learning in ways that support that learning. Among the most powerful options, we now understand, are students telling the story of their own growth while they’re learning, and students reporting to others about their achievement status with evidence to back up their claims. In this brief but strategy-packed book, Anne, Kathleen, and Caren show teachers exactly how to take full advantage of these options.

Conferencing and Repor ting provides practical strategies for engaging students as partners in (1) initiating and conducting conversations about their learning, and (2) conferencing with others about their learning success, whereby they become partners in telling their own story. Not only have Anne, Kathleen, and Caren’s offerings (originally published in 2001) stood the test of a decade of application, but, in the interim, a strong and rapidly growing body of research has risen to corroborate their contention that these strategies have a profoundly positive impact on student learning. (For details, see Hattie & Timperley, 2007.)

8

Conferencing and Reporting

Before launching into the study of these offerings, it is ver y important that the reader understand the circumstances that make it possible for student-involved assessment, record keeping, and communication to make their unique and powerful contribution to learning. Those essential conditions turn the classroom into an environment in which students are helped to gain a sense of control over their own academic well-being—that is, a sense of academic self-efficacy, if you will. Professor Albert Bandura has studied self-efficacy as a generalized psychological characteristic that can be defined as a continuum from strong to weak. The two paragraphs that follow describe both ends of that span in those generalized terms. But educators can think of this in academic terms. When applied consistently day-to-day in the classroom, the strategies described herein can move students boldly toward the strong end of the academic selfefficacy continuum, by building students’ sense of control over their own academic well-being.

A strong sense of efficacy enhances human accomplishment and personal well-being in many ways. People with high assurance in their capabilities approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than as threats to be avoided. They set themselves challenging goals and maintain strong commitment to them, becoming deeply engrossed in learning, and heightening and sustaining their efforts in the face of failure.

Foreword 9

They quickly recover their sense of efficacy after failures or setbacks, attributing failure to insufficient effort or deficient knowledge and skills which are acquirable. . . .

In contrast, people who doubt their capabilities shy away from difficult tasks, which they view as personal threats. They have low aspirations and weak commitment to the goals they choose to pursue. When faced with difficult tasks, they dwell on their personal deficiencies and anticipate obstacles and adverse outcomes, rather than concentrating on how to perform successfully. They not only slacken their efforts and give up quickly, but are slow to recover their sense of efficacy following failure or setbacks. Viewing their insufficient performance as deficient aptitude, they quickly lose faith in their own capabilities.

(Bandura, 1994, p. 71) To understand how Anne, Kathleen, and Caren’s strategies support the development in students of a strong sense of internal control of learning, consider their first entry in initiating conversations about learning: Work Samples. In this case, students compile samples of their work that are illustrative of changes in their own capabilities. This process requires that they understand the learning target and performance criteria well enough to see and understand those changes. They select two pieces of their work that reveal improvements and prepare to share those, along with their evaluations of each

10

Conferencing and Reporting

piece, as evidence of their learning, with someone whose opinion of them they care about—parents, peers, teachers, and others. While they may not have progressed all the way to the learning destination, they can watch themselves moving ever closer, and thus maintain the sense of optimism needed to keep going.

A GPS (global positioning system) is an apt metaphor for understanding this process. When one uses a GPS in an automobile, boat, or plane, one lays a solid foundation for success in traveling to a desired destination. One enters that destination and the current location. The computer calculates waypoints along the journey and tracks progress from waypoint to waypoint, keeping the traveler informed of current location. The conferencing and reporting strategies offered herein represent a GPS for student learning success. Teachers determine and share with their students the learning destination. Together, they use the classroom assessment process to determine where the student is now.

Then, working as a team, they mark the waypoints as the student travels, ultimately arriving at the destination—learning success. These strategies for conversing about learning represent various kinds of travel logs to achievement.

The reader should think of the section on studentinvolved conferences as a celebration of arrival at the destination and a determination of where we go next in the learning. In truth, I have watched parents moved to tears with pride and surprise at what

Foreword 11

they see their child demonstrating in a student-led conference. They see and hear their child revealing capabilities they had no idea she or he possessed.

The authors provide clear and specific instructions for what to do in preparation for, during, and after conferences to leave learners feeling pride at what has been accomplished, as well as a connection between that and their plans for what comes next in their learning.

For decades, we have operated on the assumption that assessment is something teachers do to students. We have believed that, if we just get the right evidence into teachers’ hands, they will make all of the right instructional decisions and schools will become increasingly effective. These beliefs aren’t wrong, but they are insufficient, ignoring the reality that students are data-based instructional decisionmakers, too. Learners interpret their own evidence and decide, for example, whether the target is within reach for them and whether to take the risk of trying.

As educators, our collective oversight is not realizing that students get to make their decisions first.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what teachers decide.

If the student gives up, the learning stops. This book is about helping students make productive decisions about continuing to pursue academic success. When they do, achievement skyrockets. I encourage readers to take full advantage of the tools offered herein.

Rick Stiggins Assessment Training Institute Portland, OR

12

Conferencing and Reporting

References Bandura, A. (1994). Self-efficacy. In V. S. Ramachaudran (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Human Behavior (Vol. 4, pp. 71–81). New York: Academic Press.

Hattie, J. & H. Timperley. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112.

Rick Stiggins Pearson Assessment Training Institute, Portland, OR

involve students in their own assessment. The authors provide time-tested ideas and practical step-by-step instructions for students to demonstrate their learning and take an active role in providing proof of learning to others.

This book includes: • Practical ideas • Cross-curricular examples • A variety of ways to involve students in showing proof of learning • Responses to commonly asked questions • Reproducibles

Conferencing and Reporting is the third book of the three-volume set

called Knowing What Counts —a series for teachers who want to help their students learn more by involving them in assessment.

Knowing What Counts

Conferencing and Reporting Second Edition

Kathleen Gregory l Caren Cameron l Anne Davies

Conferencing and Reporting focuses on practical ways for teachers to

Conferencing and Reporting

“In this brief but strategy-packed book, Kathleen, Caren, and Anne show teachers exactly how to take full advantage of involving students in telling the story of their own growth and then reporting to others about their achievement status with evidence to back up their claims. This book is about helping students make productive decisions in order to pursue academic success. When they do, achievement skyrockets. I encourage readers to take full advantage of the tools offered herein.”

solution-tree.com

A Joint Publication

Kathleen Gregory l Caren Cameron l Anne Davies

Foreword by Rick Stiggins